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Shame of African prostitutes in Paris!
Picture this scenario: a scantily dressed woman probably in her 40s accosts a man of about 50 in a street and blatantly asks if he is up for it. The poor bloke shakes his head and passes her by. Next, this woman shouts to two other women across the street asking them "How many have you got tonight"? One replied "nothing". The other bursts into shrieking laughter saying she had only got to do three more for the night. Well, your guess is as right as mine. By the way, they were speaking in Twi, a Ghanaian dialect. Shockingly, some five paces ahead and another woman (her friend called her Mawa) cried out loudly, probably in pain but certainly in Baoule (La Cote d'ivoire) that her "v****** aches but the money is sweet". In a patois french her friends shouted back in chorus, "l'argent fait le bonheur!" Something in the lines of money is sweeter.
This is not fiction. This is a real event that unfolded before my eyes in Strasbourg St. Denis in France recently.
The scene was Rue de St. Denis (or if you like, Saint Denis Street) in a Parisian district. Unperturbed by the blistering cold that night a bevy of ladies, no, a hell of shameless leeches paraded their unworthy willingness to satisfy men of different hues, sizes and stamina. Until then, I had heard and read stories of prostitutes and had, on a couple of occasions, been accosted by some in North London, but never did I anticipate the shocking scene at that corner in the French capital. The whole street, from junction to junction was littered with prostitutes. Some stood in groups, others all alone. Never in my life have I witnessed an all-women demonstration of this magnitude. What really got to me was not the fact that majority of them were black. The whole place was like an African market. I heard about four different African languages spoken by the time I got through to the top of St. Denis Street. My Chaperon who had earlier warned me not to look surprised or not to stare too much said the situation is alarming. "A lot of these girls are lured from Africa with promises of better lifestyles but they end up degrading themselves in such a lowly way", he said. He told me there are some older African women he knows who have been doing this for ages. "It's like a drug to them", he quipped and immediately added that "they are obviously hooked but they don't seem to get any richer".
All along I kept asking myself if the French authorities knew about St. Denis Street. Does it exist on their maps at all? If they do know then I am not at all surprised that the showcase I saw seemed a normal way of life there because the demonstrators of this dishonourable act looked shamelessly defiant. What does that speak of our women?
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BEN ACKAH MENSAH- SAY IT LOUD!
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